It’s been much of the same for the UFC ever since, with most of the promotion’s champions being forced to the sidelines with long-term injuries or other affliction’s in the past two years. Fun fact: There have been just 11 title fights in 2014, with six of those fights belonging to Jose Aldo, Ronda Rousey, and Demetrious Johnson. Fan complaints of oversaturation have reached a fever pitch, and in July, the UFC was forced to cancel UFC 176 in the wake of Aldo’s injury.

But you already know this. Any MMA fan who has been paying at least half-attention to the sport in recent years has seen the negative effects the UFC’s increased schedule has had on their product. What you might not know, however, is just how bad the injury bug of 2012-2014 is affecting Zuffa’s earnings, and Standard and Poor’s recent assessment of Zuffa (via MMAJunkie) paints a pretty ugly picture…

My father was an avid martial arts enthusiast. I remember treading into the basement where he had set up a heavy bag, a speed bag, and free weights. There was also a television, and on that television was usually boxing…but sometimes there’d be mixed martial arts—specifically the UFC.

I knew about the UFC throughout most of my childhood, and sometimes I’d even watch the cards with my father. However, I didn’t start getting deep into the TapouT-clad rabbit hole until high school. When I first got my driver’s license, my friends and I headed to the mall. Our objective: Pick up as many old-school UFC DVDs as we could find. We bought one of each they had in stock (I think our first haul was UFCs 1, 3, and 8).

We decided to watch in order. We popped the DVD in, and hit play.

“Hello, I’m Bill Wallace and welcome to McNichols are-*BELCH*”

We died laughing. But Wallace’s infamous burp in the first 15 seconds of the broadcast wasn’t the only bizarre and insane thing to happen during the first UFC event. By the end of UFC 1, I asked myself “What lunacy was going on behind the scenes?” because clearly, things were chaotic behind the curtain.

It’s been a decade since then, and in that decade I’ve read several books that elucidated the circumstances around the UFC’s birth—Clyde Gentry’s No Holds Barred and Jonathan Snowden’s Total MMA being chief among them. These books, while fantastic, don’t offer the same level of insight into the primordial UFC scene than Is This Legal: The Inside Story of The First UFC From the Man Who Created Itby UFC co-creator Art Davie.

Note: This timeline of MMA’s history is extremely abridged for the sake of brevity. If you’re interested in the topic, Jonathan Snowden’s Total MMA and Shooters, and Clyde Gentry’s No Holds Barred cover MMA history in detail better than I ever could.

MMA History

19th century: Various mixed rules contests take place throughout the United States, ultimately morphing into what we now call professional wrestling. (Seriously, I can’t recommend Shooters enough for information about this phase of combat sports’ evolution.)

1898: Edward William Barton-Wright invents Bartitsu–a martial art combining boxing, judo, savate, and stick fighting and one of the first dedicated “mixed martial arts” in the entire world. This mixing of styles occurs 42 years before the birth of Bruce Lee, the so-called “father of MMA.”

1905: President Theodore Roosevelt conceptualizes MMA on a whim in a letter to his son, Kermit. “With a little practice in [jiu-jitsu], I am sure that one of our big wrestlers or boxers, simply because of his greatly superior strength, would be able to kill any of those Japanese,” he says in reference to watching a Japanese grappler submit an American wrestler named Joseph Grant.

1914: Judo ambassador and all around tough guy Mitsuyo Maeda arrives in Brazil. In the coming years, he’ll begin teaching the Gracie family judo techniques, planting the seeds for BJJ.

Early-mid 20th century:Vale Tudo competitions emerge in Brazil, and ultimately gain popularity. The Gracie family rises to prominence and enjoys success in these “everything allowed” contests.

Montreal-based lawyer Dick Pound told the Canadian Press that by testing athletes in the month or so prior to and the day of a contracted bout, Zuffa is leaving a wide window of opportunity open for PED use the rest of the year by its athletes.

“It’s complete illusory and obviously intended to be that way.The minute you know when you’ll be tested, it’s very easy to make sure you don’t test positive.”

This time, the parent company of the UFC and Strikeforce has resorted to a lawsuit filed today in New York U.S. district court against New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. According to The Wall Street Journal, the plaintiffs are seeking a declaration that the ban of MMA in New York violates the First Amendment, which states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The portion of the amendment that Zuffa is focusing on is the “freedom of speech” part, which also covers freedom of expression. Because one of the three words in the term “mixed martial arts” is “arts,” Zuffa lawyers will attempt to argue that the sport is a form of artistic expression, and as such, should not be criminalized in the state.

Anywho, you may have seen pictures of the GP championship belt that showed up last week, and heard that Coker and company are still lukewarm about the idea of calling the GP winner the Strikeforce champion. We thought that didn’t really make sense, and Josh Barnett agrees. At the Strikeforce press conference Saturday night, Barnett tried to twist Coker’s arm a bit, asking: “Why don’t we sweeten the pot?” Barnett asked. “Why don’t we put that title on the line between me and Cormier?”

Coker, bless his heart, didn’t want to commit to that, and you have to wonder: “Why?”

The game in the video above is Fighters Uncaged, a fighting game for the XboX 360 that utilizes the XBoX Kinect motion control system to turn the game player into the game controller. The on-screen character replicates the movements that the player makes in his living room, and virtual beatdowns ensue. That’s the concept, at least. In reality, the game has been beaten up so bad by critics that Dana White wanted to fire it.

Of all the things we’ve seen thus far, two news stories are head and shoulders above the rest in terms of impact. The announcement of Zuffa’s acquisition of Strikeforce and the recent news of UFC signing a television deal with FOX are the top two pound-for-pound news stories of 2011. Which story carries more significance? Which is the bigger game-changer? Only here at CagePotato, you the reader get to decide.

But while that sort of thing wouldn’t have batted an eye under Scott Coker’s droopy watch, Zuffa runs a much tighter ship, and won’t run the risk of Barnett suffering an injury in a worked puroresu match two weeks before he has to show up for a legit cage-fight. As Fighters Only reports: